Socio-geographical factors in vulnerability to dengue in Thai villages: a spatial regression analysis

Focusing on the socio-geographical factors that influence local vulnerability to dengue at the village level, spatial regression methods were applied to analyse, over a 5-year period, the village-specific, cumulative incidence of all reported dengue cases among 437 villages in Prachuap Khiri Khan, a semi-urban province of Thailand. The K-order nearest neighbour method was used to define the range of neighbourhoods. Analysis showed a significant neighbourhood effect (ρ = 0.405, P <0.001), which implies that villages with geographical proximity shared a similar level of vulnerability to dengue. The two independent social factors, associated with a higher incidence of dengue, were a shorter distance to the nearest urban area (β = -0.133, P <0.05) and a smaller average family size (β = -0.102, P <0.05). These results indicate that the trend of increasing dengue occurrence in rural Thailand arose in areas under stronger urban influence rather than in remote rural areas.